This Week in Review

Well, the civil war raging throughout the county over the future of the
Akaku
public access cable channels seems to be coming along nicely, according to a piece in today’s
Maui News
. In fact, the station’s board meeting last night on state efforts to divert Akaku money to education went on for hours—nearly as long, in fact, as one of the county planning hearings it often televises gavel to gavel. Even Mayor
Alan Arakawa
got into the act, blistering station manager Sean McLaughlin for “squabbling about a little bit of money” ($700,000, to be exact). Then Councilwoman
Jo Anne Johnson
stepped up to rip developer
Everett Dowling
—the father of the movement to slash Akaku’s funding in the first place. Of course, Dowling wasn’t at the hearing. That’s because, as he’s said in the past (see “Everett’s Bills,” Mar. 3), this whole issue has nothing to do with speech… An unrelated story in the same
News
issue notes that our honorable state senators have seen fit to pass a bill boosting tax credits for filmmakers coming to Hawaii from four percent of their production expenses to a whopping 15 percent if they shoot on Oahu and 20 percent if they head to Neighbor Islands. Yay for Hawaii! Of course, their esteemed colleagues over in the state House see loving Hawaii a bit differently, and let die a bill that would have banned smoking on state beaches and public areas.